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Perhaps I missed it because, I won’t lie, some of the posts in this thread have gotten super long and I ended up simply skimming through them, but I don’t believe anyone is suggesting someone actually show their face in an interview. I can say that if I were to conduct one, I’d prefer to do it in-game. As a matter of fact, I’ve already done an interview with ViT, the second person to unlock Jedi on Basilisk, and all we did for that was have a chat on Discord while I drove around on Yavin solo. He did, let me record his toon killing mobs for an intro segment, but that’s about it.

I also don’t believe anyone is suggesting that if you’re a member of staff or a contributor in any way that you’re automatically forced to do an interview of some kind. Of course this would be a voluntary activity as is everything regarding the project.

Its not said explicit video with face an all, I just wanted to put it out there, so that we all understand that some are more private than others. Some enjoy been on forum, talking to the community, others don't.

Originally Posted by Mobyus1

I’m seeming to remember something called “Community Spotlight”... I don’t remember if it was from Live or from some other game I used to play, but iirc each month there would be a post about a random member of the community; including such things as who they are, how they got into the game, how long they’ve been playing, their favorite part of the game, etc... I think bringing something like that back, even if it’s managed by a player rather than staff, would be beneficial to the community. And then perhaps every so often, we could throw a staff member into the mix to learn a bit about those that want to share. And again, in case it’s not obvious, we’re not sharing SSNs or anything personal here... it’s all about Star Wars and gaming.

Way back, at the start of me joining staff, we had a "newspaper" circulating the forum. Most was satire as I remember it, but there where some interviews... Or i might be mixing it up. It was a long time ago.

Just to clear up my comment above, I agree with all of you 100% on keeping anonymity and only answering questions ppl are comfortable with answering because boundaries are huge in all aspects of our lives. I hold no expectations for and nor do I wish to impose any expectations on anyone in the community. I do really appreciate the opportunity provided by the staff that we have been given to be a part of the testing and community here at the Emu. I should probably have used an audio interview or IG (as Mobyus mentioned about) interview as an example since those will keep the identities secure for all involved. Not looking to pry into personal lives here, just to increase community cohesiveness. I wouldnt want anyone forced to do something they didnt want to i.e. to come to the forums, participate in an session or even play a toon they dont like, lol. Only looking to make the info of the forums more readily known. I have met a few (not many) new to, not only the Emu, but also SWG who had no idea there was the plethora of info available on the forums that we have.

Sorry if I caused any confusion, intent was only to introduce more ideas for the brainstorm :] Have a wonderful Emu day!!

I don't have a good set of answers yet but I will keep noodling on it and will share my thoughts in a new thread when I'm further along in my process.

Or just use the Dev Q&A sticky thread that already exists---> https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=183748
(Could even have Vlada remove any remnants of 'Nee', if it's such a turn-off. But regardless of how anyone feels about me, that ^ existing thread was literally made to accomplish at least some of what people are craving here. )

----

Originally Posted by Mobyus1

Perhaps I missed it because some of the posts in this thread have gotten super long and I ended up simply skimming through them, .

I thought i had linked this earlier in one of my prior posts but i might've forgotten:https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=270
(Yes, that ^ sticky thread is a bit out-dated, but again it seems to be exactly what u guys are wishing for, no? Except for the voice/video aspect. )

---

Originally Posted by Mobyus1

I’m seeming to remember something called “Community Spotlight”... I don’t remember if it was from Live or from some other game I used to play, but iirc each month there would be a post about a random member of the community

3 times Nee ain't the charm but...https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=183784
...if you do end up creating a NEW 'Community Spotlight' video or whatever, i still have all the PM's i received from all those guild-leaders and i'd be more than happy to share the info (Pending their approval of course --- It's not private info or anything. It's just IN-GAME tidbits & such, but i'd still ask for permission before passing it along. They're just collecting dust at this point though, since the 'featurette' idea never came to fruition...for various reasons. )

Also, in case you were thinking of the old original SOE version, here it is:

Been following this thread, new to Basilisk but played a version of the Emu 4 years ago.

Just wanna commend everyone who donates and those who put so much sweat equity into this project, it's awesome and something I didn't think I would ever get to experience again!

On the subject of Q&A's and what not, being a newer individual to the server, I'm familiar with the game, but when looking for a server I had a lot of concerns initially, such as:

Is SwgEmu one server? Or a model that many servers are based on? (Figured that out)
What are the differences in the servers? (I pretty much know this answer)
Which server is the most populated, why? (Kind of know this answer)
Are any of these servers even alive anymore?

The last question comes from a quick google search and a quick scan to see when the latest posts on the forums were, I know not everyone, as you guys have said, even looks at the forums, maybe most log in, play, logout and repeat.

However, for me, especially with a project like this where it's not a given that there will be hundreds of folks to play with, the involvement of the community that literally make the game worth working on is what I looked for first.
Long story short, there maybe an untapped following who read before installing, and if there were more consistent activity on the forum, maybe those folks would come out of the shadows.

some of what i am talking about comes from the proposal that there needs to be a promotional effort to get people in the know about how close this is to completion.
interaction with the community is always the way to go in my opinion to making sure that the base is all connected..

im not in any way trying to start anything that is going to be catering to anyone.
i just suggesting a quarterly Q&A with the base.

you can throw out a ingame email also saying "hey were doing a Q&A on da da da..

everyone working but christmas is a holiday where people come together, and this should be no different for how many years we have put into this game

I'm sorry for casting aspersions or for any negative implications. But I saw this question elsewhere and I couldn't find an answer :

How many people in the project team have access to this accountant?

If it's more than one, can the other person(s) verify what Oru has said?

This accountant should have known the tax implications. And they should have had professional insurance to cover a mistake like this. That's what they are paid for.

I’ve addressed this “elsewhere” but as a repeat here:

I want to be clear, I know it's hard to understand the tax situation but its as real as death and I am personally contributing a large sum of money along with others on staff to just make it go away. I trust Oru deeply, I've spoken with him and I have spent many hours of my life with the core team working to make our environment work like a clock so we're all having fun. What is often not said or understood is the devs enjoy, well, being devs and we want the community to enjoy the results of our work. Meanwhile, it comes as a stab directly to the heart when trolls attack, we are just people like everyone else, we have lives, children, dogs, cats, and work and we come to this community contributing our skills to have fun and empower others to have fun. Its fun to think of conspiracy theories but Occam's razor teaches us the simplest explanation is most likely. I've seen the documents, I've used google translate to read them (hard but not impossible) and the situation satisfies me enough that I'm helping pay the bill directly with my own personal money. I've run companies for 25 years of my life and I know how complicated it can be, how expensive lawyers and accountants are and how easy it is to make a costly mistake. We were going to post the documents but then we noticed personal info like addresses and tax ids in them and we were concerned about exposing Oru to trolls in real life. Oru will need to redact them and post later but then they exist and have convinced me to act. We will learn from this event and find solutions to keep it from happening again.

Good grief, I barely understand MY taxes so I couldnt even begin to contemplate an international tax code. Life is learning, applying and moving on in all aspects. Since I previously volunteered for about 11 years to a couple animal rescue organization, I completely understand the time, effort, sweat, fear, (blood and pain, in my case sometimes, lol) that can come into play. Kudos to ALL the staff for all you do so that we have an opprotunity to contribute to a community as unique as this and play a MMORPG (well THE MMORPG) we all love!! Thank you all and have a safe, happy holiday!

I'm sorry for casting aspersions or for any negative implications. But I saw this question elsewhere and I couldn't find an answer :

How many people in the project team have access to this accountant?

If it's more than one, can the other person(s) verify what Oru has said?

This accountant should have known the tax implications. And they should have had professional insurance to cover a mistake like this. That's what they are paid for.

I understand your concerns and i have updated the original post with the last tax balance sheet. Google translate loves this document but it is not hard to comprehend in this format either. Under 104 (general sales tax) you'll see a bunch of items dated back to 2018.01.01 (used them from 2015 to 2017, that's how it could be corrected), which were the missing taxes after Softlayer in Hungarian forints (HUF, 1 USD ~= 285 HUF). The other smaller amounts for 2018 are missing taxes for Slack.

Still struggling with redacting the tax office report because it was signed by them and it wasn't easy to remove that..

The whole situation is quite convoluted so i refrained from describing it to it's full extent to save readers time but i can explain it a little more now. So the main issue is that we were in contract with a US based company, bought services from them residing in Dallas TX and payed the bills in US dollars. Since they had an EU branch, seems they were obligated to bill us through this branch using the EU VAT system, which they indicated on the invoices with minuscule letters. None of us seen this of course but according to EU tax laws, this makes us, the buyers, responsible to report and occasionally pay the taxes. Reporting is one thing but the resolution whether we should pay taxes or not is quite complex. This consist of two things according to Hungarian taxation laws (yes there are local rules for this!). First you have to determine the place of fulfillment which in case of a tax-exempt company buying services is the site of the seller (Netherlands in case for Softlayer). That would have made Softlayer to pay local taxes and charge a higher bill but of course there is an exclusion for this in another section of the law which sais that in case of an electronic services, the place of fulfillment is the site of the seller. It describes several occasions for electronic services and while rented servers is not specifically listed, it is more or less evident that our case is included. The tax lawyer is still looking into this. Anyhow the story is still not over yet. So okay the place of fulfillment is Hungary but there is a 10k euro limit where you have to pay the 27% taxes from but you have to use a EUR to HUF conversion ratio fixed on a specific date (sometimes in 2016). So to determine this do we have to use the USD to HUF conversion ratio on this date or the date of the transaction? Or use the USD to EUR ratio? Anyhow, according to our interpretation we are only exceed a limit by a small amount, but the lawyer advised us to pay the taxes to get ahead of the possible fees (250% worst case) so we did not hesitate to pay because most likely the tax is due to be paid.

Now you think the story is over but once you'll see the tax office report and take the time to translate it, you will see they have raised another issue concerning your donations that could have made this situation even more complicated where we could require back taxes but made us pay taxes after the donations. Thankfully the lawyer took their claim apart, so i won't even describe it even further.

So tax issues are complicated. Company taxation are even more complicated. Company tax in Hungary is way more complicated thanks to legal uncertainty. Company taxes in Hungary over the EU system having a 3rd party contract to the US is beyond complicated as you can see. I can tell you that even the tax officers were scratching their heads along with the tax lawyer and still not completely sure about it..

I am also a software developer and business owner. I'm not unfamiliar with how these things work but I'm not claiming to be an expert. I'm not trying to troll. I do like some conspiracy theories but I'm not trying to turn this into one.

I'm sorry if I come across as ungrateful or negative. I know I'm implying some nasty things about people but I am still reserving judgment. I don't believe a scam has occurred but people's circumstances can change fast and nobody is above temptation. If one person is holding the purse strings and the purse is in Hungary and nobody else can communicate with the accountant or the bank, you will get people like me asking questions like why isn't the accountants professional insurance covering this?.

Ultimately though, you're satisfied and I don't need to be satisfied because I'm not involved. And it would be presumptuous of me to make demands that I do be satisfied.

I understand your concerns and i have updated the original post with the last tax balance sheet. Google translate loves this document but it is not hard to comprehend in this format either. Under 104 (general sales tax) you'll see a bunch of items dated back to 2018.01.01 (used them from 2015 to 2017, that's how it could be corrected), which were the missing taxes after Softlayer in Hungarian forints (HUF, 1 USD ~= 285 HUF). The other smaller amounts for 2018 are missing taxes for Slack.

Still struggling with redacting the tax office report because it was signed by them and it wasn't easy to remove that..

The whole situation is quite convoluted so i refrained from describing it to it's full extent to save readers time but i can explain it a little more now. So the main issue is that we were in contract with a US based company, bought services from them residing in Dallas TX and payed the bills in US dollars. Since they had an EU branch, seems they were obligated to bill us through this branch using the EU VAT system, which they indicated on the invoices with minuscule letters. None of us seen this of course but according to EU tax laws, this makes us, the buyers, responsible to report and occasionally pay the taxes. Reporting is one thing but the resolution whether we should pay taxes or not is quite complex. This consist of two things according to Hungarian taxation laws (yes there are local rules for this!). First you have to determine the place of fulfillment which in case of a tax-exempt company buying services is the site of the seller (Netherlands in case for Softlayer). That would have made Softlayer to pay local taxes and charge a higher bill but of course there is an exclusion for this in another section of the law which sais that in case of an electronic services, the place of fulfillment is the site of the seller. It describes several occasions for electronic services and while rented servers is not specifically listed, it is more or less evident that our case is included. The tax lawyer is still looking into this. Anyhow the story is still not over yet. So okay the place of fulfillment is Hungary but there is a 10k euro limit where you have to pay the 27% taxes from but you have to use a EUR to HUF conversion ratio fixed on a specific date (sometimes in 2016). So to determine this do we have to use the USD to HUF conversion ratio on this date or the date of the transaction? Or use the USD to EUR ratio? Anyhow, according to our interpretation we are only exceed a limit by a small amount, but the lawyer advised us to pay the taxes to get ahead of the possible fees (250% worst case) so we did not hesitate to pay because most likely the tax is due to be paid.

Now you think the story is over but once you'll see the tax office report and take the time to translate it, you will see they have raised another issue concerning your donations that could have made this situation even more complicated where we could require back taxes but made us pay taxes after the donations. Thankfully the lawyer took their claim apart, so i won't even describe it even further.

So tax issues are complicated. Company taxation are even more complicated. Company tax in Hungary is way more complicated thanks to legal uncertainty. Company taxes in Hungary over the EU system having a 3rd party contract to the US is beyond complicated as you can see. I can tell you that even the tax officers were scratching their heads along with the tax lawyer and still not completely sure about it..

Thanks for spending time explaining that! My head hurts but I get the jist! Your doing an amazing job!!!